A Rogue Agent's Afterthoughts
by V. Emily
Summary: Just what it says in the title. What is Callen thinking after the shooting of the Chameleon and his subsequent arrest? Does NOT resolve the season three cliffhanger; just explores Callen's thoughts. One-shot.


**Gah, enough with the one-shots! I seriously need to put the work into the series I'm beginning. Anyways, this one has been in my notebook for a couple of weeks now. It's just an observatory one-shot about what Callen might be thinking in jail. As you'll pick up on, it's set the same afternoon as the finale. So! Let me know what you thought of this. I know it's small, but...**

**(I really do apologize for not working on the series. It's Kensi and Deeks centered, as is most of my other work. I hope to have the first chapter up within the next week or so.)**

**Disclaimer: Why would I spend my ideas on fan-fiction if I owned NCIS: LA? Just sayin'.**

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He'd been in prisons numerous times before. Either he'd been putting someone into one, or else he'd been visiting someone. Once or twice, he's even been the one locked in the cell, even is it was always just for undercover work.

Today wasn't the same as all those times.

Today, he was locked up because of a personal fault, a personal decision he shouldn't have made.

Today, Callen had killed a man.

Albeit, the man was a sadistic murderer who had unjustly taken the lives of countless innocent people. Maybe he deserved to die, though it was no mortal's decision if he did. Maybe the world was better of with the Chameleon dead. (In fact, Callen was certain of this.)

Maybe, but it didn't have to happen this way. There were other options this time. Callen knew it. His team knew it. The Chameleon knew it. He knew it too well, actually. He'd practically dared Callen to pull back on the trigger of that handgun. In Callen's life, he'd never cared much for dares. While classmates pressured one another to lick the icy telephone poles in the wintertime, Callen merely watched on. But this wasn't a meaningless dare from his troubled childhood. This dare had been weighted with the lives of two friends, Lauren Hunter and Mike Renko...a double-dog dare, if you cared to think that way. Hunter and Renko, they had their fingers on that trigger, too. They had helped Callen pull it back, had helped send those bullets flying into the chest of the smug chess-playing killer. And now, those two deceased agents were sitting with Callen on the cot in this cell, decked out in identical orange jumpsuits. Figments of his imagination, maybe. But Callen felt their presence, would always feel it for as long as he lived with this regrettable decision.

So when you put Renko and Hunter into the equation, it wasn't necessary for Callen to ask himself why he'd done what he did. No one needed to. The harsh reality was very much apparent to Callen and his team. What had snapped in that tense instant, when Callen had his gun pointed at the murderer? The answer was the devoted part of the agent that loved his friends like family - and two of those friends had died that day at the hands of the Chameleon.

The ghosts of Hunter and Renko patted Callen on the back and applauded those shots that he'd put through the Chameleon. But more important to Callen now was the disappointment he knew his living teammates felt for him. And that knowledge was what made the hardened agent now bury his face in his hands, the weight of the day on his shoulders. Even being the lone wolf he typically was, Callen didn't want to bear that weight on his own. Of course, no one could help him. No one was even allowed to see him. He had no choice but to carry this yoke that he'd forged for himself with a handful of fired bullets.

If he'd wanted support, he'd have listened to his team as they stood there, begging him to put the gun down. Callen hadn't obeyed, and now look where he was. He had become one of the very criminals he'd made it his mission to fight. What he'd give to be in the car right now, with Sam driving them both to the crime scene of their newest case! What he wouldn't pay to hear Kensi and Deeks arguing incessantly in the office, both annoying and amusing Callen at the same time! It wasn't his team now; it would be Sam's, since he was the next in rank to take over.

Poor Sam. What would he be doing right now? Beating a punching bag in the gym, imagining it was the Chameleon's face? Or maybe Deeks's face, if the cheeky detective had gotten on Sam's bad side? With a cringe, Callen thought that maybe today, Sam would be imagining Callen's own face as that punching bug as he threw his fists at it time and time again.

Callen thought back to a conversation he and Sam had been having not long ago. They'd been discussing what Callen would do for a hobby once he retired. Laughingly, San had mentioned that the only way Callen would ever retire would be with a bullet. Callen looked back on that conversation, then heard those several gunshots he'd made this afternoon that had gotten him arrested. With chagrin and a grim smile at the irony, Callen realized that his partner had been right.

A bullet _had _ended Callen's career, but the agent himself hadn't been the one to get shot.

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**(A/N): If anyone has already made that observation that I did in the last line, I deeply apologize. I haven't read much post-finale fiction yet, so I'm not sure what's been done and what hasn't. Thanks for taking the time out of your day to read! -V.**


End file.
